UK businesses risking huge GDPR fines

Businesses in the trades sector are ditching old tech without wiping memory first.

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Most of UK’s businesses in the trades sector are breaking GDPR rules and are looking at potentially high fines.

According to a report from Probrand, almost half (44 per cent) of businesses in the trade sector don’t clear the data from old IT equipment they scrap. Those includes construction workers, plumbers and carpenters.

The report says that this ties to a bigger problem – almost three quarters of all UK businesses (81 per cent) in the trades sector don’t have protocols or processes that would help them get rid of old tech. To make matters worse, half of workers don’t even know who to approach within their own company to help them ditch old and unusable tech.

Probrand names transportation, sales and marketing, manufacturing, utilities and retail as the five industries “most guilty” of not clearing memory before dumping electronics.

“Given the amount of publicity around GDPR it is arguably impossible to be unaware or misunderstand the basics of what is required for compliance. So, it is startling to discover just how many businesses are failing to both implement and follow some of the simplest data protection practices,” says Matt Royle, marketing director at Probrand.

“This is especially startling to see from businesses within the trades sector, where sensitive customer information including address details are handled all the time.”

“Given these findings, it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure that all businesses have a disposal procedure in place to avoid inadvertently leaking sensitive data.”